Comments on: Recall Email

By: Vero Pepperrell

Vero Pepperrell — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:35:13 +0000

Quite at the other end of the scale is the non-optional 30 seconds buffer you get when you send mass email newsletters.

In my case, I weekly sent to +400,000 recipients. I’d check, check again, and check once more, then hit the “send” button. I then had to watch a painful 30 second countdown before seeing the emails get sent. It was like pulling off a band-aid slowly, a horribly stressful moment that gave me cold sweats even after a year of weekly sends.

Blergh, I far prefer blogging to email marketing. Correct your copy with a small dose of {del} and people will generally be lenient.

By: Werner Egipsy Souza

Werner Egipsy Souza — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:38:18 +0000

The funny thing today was, I sent an SMS to the wrong person, and received an SMS which was not sent to me.
Somehow, “Sorry!! Not for you ” seems to work just fine!
I guess the only need for such a tool, is to (seemingly) professionally retract a message, and try to save face by ensuring that you didn’t retract it personally!

By: Bertil

Bertil — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 17:15:43 +0000

It’s a MS Exchange feature and works well if the receiver uses Exchange and hasn’t opened your message yet. For technical reason, your pen friend was not aware you were not using it—and there is no checks on the receiver mail server prior to offering that option.
I used to use it a lot when I was a consultant with a pain-in-the-back boss (“Send It! — Take it back!”) and I always checked on the mail header (the scrambled secret attachment to all e-mails) whether my clients used Exchange.

By: Craig Baker

Craig Baker — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 02:49:19 +0000

Maybe email should have a built in buffer, like live radio which has a 10 second buffer. So if you hit send and then suddenly realize your mistake, you have a period in which the operation can be reversed.

On occasions I wanted a the following feature that I have never come across in email. I want to be able to send an email at a future time, where the email will be not be received before such a time.

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 21:21:16 +0000

David – yes, I was thinking something along those lines, among other things.

Russell

By: david cushman

david cushman — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:29:38 +0000

Are you thinking, wouldn’t it be great to have an sms recall function?
Then again, I could do with a life rewind function from time to time…

By: Russell Buckley

Russell Buckley — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:46:05 +0000

Thanks for the input, people.

Russell

By: JEQP

JEQP — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:23:07 +0000

I had a journalist co-worker once who received an internal e-mail, apparently because his name was similar to someone in the company. The PR rep who sent the e-mail called and after much haggling managed to get him to commit not to write about anything in the e-mail — which he agreed to do because there was nothing of interest in there. We all had a good laugh. A couple of hours later, towards the dog end of the day, he just starts laughing again and doesn’t stop…sure enough, the PR rep had done it again…

Not really relevant, but you brought it to mind…

By: John

John — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 14:16:57 +0000

I think it is a MS Exchange feature and not all are set up to send email out immediately. Sometimes you can recall an email while it’s still on the Exchange Server before it gets sent externally.

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:19:44 +0000

If you hit the recall msg first before opening the original email, then it deletes the original email. It assumes everyone is using the same email app and hence only really works within large organisations who all share the same platform.

Folk are a tad silly if they try to use it to recall external emails.